Dungeon Siege II: Broken World Hands-On

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With the land in shambles, it's up to you to finish what you started.

By Tom McNamara

Popularized a decade ago by Diablo, the action-RPGs have struggled in the decade since to come out from its shadow. Diablo's replayability and towering amount of sheer loot is a boulder others have attempted, with scattershot success, to push up a hill, and it's proven to be quite heavy. Demon Stone, Nox, Prince of Qin and others have tried, and few are remembered now, let alone remembered fondly. Yet the Dungeon Siege series, with the backing of Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games, has managed to overcome.

It's had its share of hurdles, but the sequel corrected several key problems you may have noticed in the first game, like party members being too powerful and the storyline being a little bland and derivative. DS2 evolved the franchise into something satisfying, something memorable beyond the cool loot and the explosive combat. Its expansion, Broken World, is set to come out in August, a year after DS2's retail release, and if you liked DS2, then you might want to check out Broken World. GPG has overhauled the underwhelming voice acting, added some interesting gameplay twists, and hasn't appeared to mess with what made DS2 appealing.

As you may have heard, Broken World picks up the tale in the wake of DS2's cliffhanger ending, and you're in the same role but now dealing with the aftermath of a cataclysmic battle and attempting to hunt down the big fish who wriggled away. He took with him a powerful relic, and it's up to you to stop him and take it back before he finishes what he started. Valdis, your nemesis from DS2, turned out to be a pawn in a nefarious wizard's game, and as the result of your fight with him, the world of Aranna has taken some serious damage. Plus bizarre things are occurring to the creatures you've encountered before. They've become twisted and more challenging to deal with. Some simply swing harder, but others may explode or blow a cloud of deadly gas when they die. You won't be able to wade in with impunity any longer -- you'll have to be aware of your party members' locations in relation to where the beasties are.

On the bright side, there are two new character classes to offset these new challenges somewhat. They're "multiclass" characters, which in Dungeon Siege jargon means that they combine the abilities of two pre-existing classes, while having their own abilities and gear tailored to them. The Fist of Stone is a fighter with proficiency in nature magic; he makes heavy use of seismic attacks and flying rocks, as his name suggests. Although a nature mage can temporarily enchant his weapon, the Fist of Stone's combat prowess drastically increases the quality of these enchants. Using a weapon enchant also allows the FoS to split his experience between nature magic and pure melee (a player increases his proficiency through repetition), so this way the FoS can swing his weapon most of the time but still be able to heal, buff his party members, and do other things a nature mage can.

The other new class is the Blood Assassin, a ranger who also uses some combat magic. In the tradition of a warlock, she uses her own health as a pool from which to draw some devastating attacks and crippling debuffs. Sometimes it's just a devastating trap that destroys everything within a certain radius, and other times she might boost the party's attack power for a brief time and the cost of health regeneration. Her most interesting ability is Execute, which works in tandem with a batch of "rune" spells that have different effects. Depending on which rune she's marked an enemy with, triggering Execute will have a different effect -- it could be poison, fire, or pure damage.

While the FoS is a preservation and enchancement-oriented character, the Blood Assassin focuses on dealing massive damage, to the point of inflicting pain upon themselves. The "pure" classes are still important in a group, since having only one specialty means increased proficiency. A combat mage or nature mage's summoned pet will have better stats, and their spells will be a little more powerful. A pure fighter can swing harder than a Fist of Stone, and a combat mage has access to more spells than a Blood Assassin. Still, with a cap of four people per party, you don't have room for everyone, so hybrid classes seem to fill in the gaps nicely. And the new hybrid classes have abilities you just can't get from the other types.

Unfortunately, this build only featured a small area of the expansion, but we were still able to wander around, explore, and fight for couple hours before we bumped up into its geographical limits. GPG says that Broken World will be in the 10-15 hour range, which is pretty impressive when you consider that many full games offer less, at full price. Look for it on store shelves in August, and keep your eyes peeled here for updates.